Torquato Tasso, Aminta

A Translation

Malcolm Hayward

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Copyright 1997

Permission is given to reproduce this text as long as the Copyright notice remains with the text and the text is not sold for profit. 

Introduction

Tasso composed the Aminta in Ferrara in March, April, and May of 1573.¹ It was presented on the evening of July 31 of that year on Isle Belvedere del Po by the famous Gelosi Company. Although we lack accounts of that performance, it was apparently well received, as a second performance, for Lucrezia d'Este, was given during Carnival of the following year. Sozzi notes a third performance on May 1, 1581, in Verona, and frequent presentations thereafter in various cities.²

The first printing of the Aminta was by Aldo Manuzio in Venice in January of 1581, some seven years after its composition. Although Tasso had been in contact with Manuzio concerning publication, this printing was without his permission.³ Tasso's desire to revise his works constantly and his neurotic fears of being used by his friends probably account for both the slowness in bringing the work to press and his unwillingness to consent to its printing. Sozzi, along with a number of other critics, suggests that this edition precedes the Draconi edition, published in Cremona in 1581, but having a dedication dated December 15, 1580, five days before the dedication date of the Aldine edition. Aldo issued a second, corrected edition later in 1581, and other editions followed in 1583, 1589, and 1590.⁴ The 1590 edition is the basis for subsequent critical editions of the Aminta. One of the difficulties in establishing a definitive text has been the lack of an authoritative manuscript; of the nine significant manuscripts available, none is an autograph manuscript.⁵ The standard edition, and the basis for this translation, is by Sozzi (Padua, 1957).

The Aminta was as popular abroad as it was in the various cities of Italy. The work was printed in Paris in 1584 and translated into French that same year. On June 6, 1591, the pastoral was printed by Wolfe in London. The year 1591 also saw its first translation into English, by Abraham Fraunce in The Countesse of Pembrokes Yvychurch, printed in London by Thomas Orwyn. This work contained both a translation of Tasso's Aminta and Fraunce's earlier published English translation (1587) of Thomas Watson's Amyntas (1585), a pastoral in eleven Latin eclogues perhaps suggested by the Aminta, but not a translation of it.⁶ Following Fraunce's work, the next translation, and one of the best, was by Henry Reynolds, published anonymously in 1628. There followed two other seventeenth century renderings, one by John Dancer in 1660 and the other by John Oldmixon in 1698. The eighteenth century saw translations by P. B. du Bois (1726), by an anonymous translator (1731), by William Ayre (1737), and by Percival Stockdale (1770). The waning popularity of the pastoral genre (in inverse proportion to Tasso's rise in popularity of the pastoral romantic hero) was indicated in the fact that but one translation appeared in the nineteenth century, by Leigh Hunt in 1820. In the twentieth Century, translations by Frederic Whitmore (1900), Ernest Grillo (1924), and Louis E. Lord (1931) have appeared.

The effects of English Literature of this often translated work have been quite broad. W. W. Greg, for example, contends that the great majority of English pastorals of the first half of the seventeenth century are influenced by the Aminta.⁷ While such a statement cannot be proved or disproved absolutely, there are several more or less direct reworkings of the play, such as Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdesse (c. 1609), Daniel's The Queenes Arcadia (1605) and Hymen's Triumph (1614), and Jonson's The Sad Shepherd (1637). Beyond these specific works, however, there is a broad area of general influence extending to style, sentiment, imagery, and diction. Parallels to the Aminta may be found in the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and many other writers' productions. As a pastoral, the Aminta is not unique, but as one of the best works within the genre, its influence is pervasive.

Just as the Aminta came to represent the pastoral tradition, so too the play depends heavily upon the tradition of the pastoral in Latin and Italian writers. Many of the images and lines are directly attributable to Virgil's Eclogues and, to a lesser extent, his Georgics, to Ovid, and to a number of other writers. In both Virgil and Ovid may be found the controlling theses of the play: the idea of the Golden Age and the Conception of love as a driving, overpowering force operating throughout nature. Closer to his time, Tasso was able to look to a well-established tradition extending from Sanazzaro's Arcadia (1504), through various pastoral dramas, such as Tansillo's Due Pellegrini (1538), Cintio's Egle (1545), and Beccari's Sacrifizio (1555).

The fact that Tasso draws heavily upon earlier sources does not mean that he Aminta is merely derivative. Rather, from his many sources, in particular the eclogue, the comedy, and the tragedy, Tasso has created what C. P. Brand terms a "hybrid" form which assimilates there different types and rises above them.⁹ Tasso's poem is not imitative, but perfective; he brings to completion and unity a number of strands that were available to him. As Sozzi says, we find "now levity, now grave substance; now elegy, now idyll; now ingenuousness and innocence, now artifice and cunning; now nature, now the court; now sane and frank realism, now a game of fantasy and tone of fable and fairy tale; now poetry and now literature." Tragedy is never far from comedy, laughter is always close to tears. All of these elements, all the characters in this tale of the woods, are bond in place by Tasso's lyrical poetry and lyrical sentimentality.

The pastori and ninfe who inhabit this world are in many ways figures who are traditional and recognizable. The first act opens with the attempt by the wise and experienced Dafne to convince the youthful, chaste, proud virgin, Silvia, of the delights of love. The second scene mirrors the first, but here we are introduced to the lovesick shepherd, Aminta, being counseled by his judicious companion, Tirsi, wise with age (he is 29). This act is closed by the well known Golden Age Chorus, which invokes natural love as opposed to the modern, stifling laws of Honor. As well as closing each act, the Chorus of

Shepherds serves as a character in the play, and performs the same functions as the other minor figures, Elpino, Nerina, and Ergasto, to draw forth, by questions, the narrative from the main characters and, at times, to describe the action. The play itself is primarily narrative rather than dramatic; the important actions take place off stage and are reported, often in long monologues. Monologues also provide impetus to events in the play, such as soliloquy of the Satyr beginning Act II, which gives movement to one of the central actions of the play, Aminta's rescue of Silvia. The subsequent action, the false death of Silvia and the false death of Aminta, followed by the uniting of the lovers, is a convenient vehicle for exploring the different and changing emotional states of the characters. Between the acts are four short intermedi; these later additions to the play comment in a general way upon the nature of love. The play as a whole is framed by the Prologue, spoken by the comic figure of Love, and the Epilogue of his mother, Venus.

Introduced by Love, the Aminta is essentially a play about love, or, perhaps, about lovers and the effects that love has on them. As a number of commentators have pointed out, here all forms of love abound, from the sacred to the profane, from youthful joy to adult disillusionment, from longing to fulfillment. The characters do not act as "real people" usually act; they do not even act as lovers really act--usually. But they are true to the image lovers have of themselves; they are lovers as lovers fell themselves to be; in this sense, they are quite true to human experience. If the world was never so when it was young, people are so. The delineation of the psychology is truthful.

The characters do seem at times contrived because they are invested with the heightened sense of awareness of themselves and of others that is characteristic of love. So too the imagery and the diction of the poem seem artificial. Tasso accounts for this, in part, by having Love affirm, in the Prologue, that he will "sweeten the sounds upon their tongues." Yet despite the artifice and the rhetorical patterns, the poetry succeeds, and succeeds well because it overcomes the seeming artifice which lies beneath it. Tasso walks a narrow line between sentiment and absurdity, between sweetness and silliness, but the flowing poetry, the classical control, never allow his to slip. When Dafne praises the love of birds, beasts, and even trees, when Aminta imagines Silvia rejoicing at his tomb, tramping on his bones with her naughty feet, then we are moved to laughter, but we are not allowed to laugh, for the lines are beautiful; the images, if sweet, are crystalline; the words, if soft, are caught within the careful control of a rhetorical balance. Dafne explains to Silvia how Tirsi went through the forest, writing verses on the trees, "inducing the pity and at the same time the laughter of the charming nymphs and shepherds. Nor does what he wrote deserve laughter, even if what he did merited it." Our own reactions are bound in the same net of laughter and tears.

The tension between laughter and tears, between the absurdity of the lovers' actions and the beauty of the poetry, is mirrored on a more serious side in the moral tension of the Aminta. In the events themselves, nothing which is counter to proper morality actually happens. The closest Tasso come to license is the Satyr's near-rape of Silvia (reported by Tirsi). But Silvia is saved by Aminta. In the end, although the lovers have been brought together, they will wait for the permission of Montano, Silvia's father, before completing their bliss. Yet the attitude towards love which Tasso presents is disturbing. Aminta has gone to the love which Tasso presents is disturbing. Aminta has gone to the fountain--albeit doubtfully--which the same plan in mind as the Satyr. Natural love, as suggested in the chorus, does sound attractive, yet Dafne advocates taking force what is not synonymous with innocent love. The Golden Age is not a prelapsarian world. Yet at the time of writing the Aminta, Tasso was composing the Gerusalemme Liberata, and in the epic he proposes a moral system in every way opposed to the morality of the Aminta. Moreover, Tasso's constant revisions of the Gerusalemme are inspired at least as much by an honest and sincere desire to produce a sound moral poem as by his hope to stay on the right side of the Inquisition.

Thus, within the Aminta there are two aspects of love which should be reconciled: first, the conscious statement of the play, that love is natural and should be free, and second, the assumed moral context of the work, that only love sanctioned by God is licit or desirable. There are a number of possible ways of dealing with this problem. One might assume, for example, one or the other of the propositions to be Tasso's real feeling, and the wealth of letters, together with the neurotic complexity of the man himself, would allow a fairly convincing proof of either pint of view. In fact, this complexity would allow both possibilities at once, according to the myriad shiftings in the artist's mind. Sozzi offers a more attractive explanation by suggesting that the Aminta may be seen as the correlative dialectic to the Gerusalemme.¹¹ Similarly, within the play itself, the differing types of love may be seen as dynamic opposites out of which synthesis is reached: a better love is forged from the essentially static and degenerative types--lust, self-denial, egotism, and so on--which are presented. As attractive as this possibility is to modern readers, and as well as it does seem to fit a play in which there is a great deal of tension, not only between moral systems, but between sentiment and sentimentality, laughter and tears, beauty and absurdity, such a system does not easily fit the religious and philosophical contexts of the drama. Perhaps too the burden of a complex philosophy is a heavy weight for an essentially lyrical work to bear.

Several other possible explanations are open which may account in part for the seemingly disparate moral propositions. First, I would reassert a point made earlier, that Tasso is exploring not what was or what should be, but what is, and what does exist in the world is a very human condition, a recognition of the passage of time and a desire to find an antidote in human terms to this rapid flight. That antidote is love.

A second, and equally attractive, possibility is that Tasso has not opposed natural love to sacred love, but to venal love. In this sense, natural love is comparatively a virtue. Moreover, in line with the courtly tradition of love, the Choruses to Act III and Act IV suggest a connection between earthly and divine love. All love is, after all, from God; love on earth may be a first step towards God. As Dafne points out, love is super-abundant in the world; to deny its force is, as she tells Silvia, to act unnaturally, to become worse than a beast. Not to bend to the power of love is to deny one's own nature.

The problems of unresolved moral issues should not, however, override the effect of the Aminta as a work of art, for in its artistry, rather than its philosophy, its worth lies. Likewise, the fact that Tasso meant certain of the characters in the drama to be identified with figures in the court at Ferrara is now only of passing historical interest. Batto is taken to be the poet Battista Guarini; Mopso to be the critic Sperone Speroni; Elpino to be the secretary to Alfonso II, Giovan Battista Pigna; Licori to be Lucrezia Bendidio, lady-in-waiting to Leonora d'Este and any early love of Tasso; and Tirsi to be Tasso himself. Except for the character of Tirsi, however, Tasso wisely confines his allegory of court life to the minor characters. The major figures, Dafne, Silvia, and Aminta, stand by themselves within the play.

Ultimately the art of Tasso's poetry combines the various elements of the play--the different traditions, the different sentiments, the different moral propositions--into a single unified whole. Yet the poetry is what is hardest to capture in a translation. My object here has been to remain as faithful to the text as might be consonant with a fidelity to certain poetic demands. The injunction of another translator of Italian poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, that "a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one," has been my highest consideration.

The metrics of the Aminta pose an immediate problem. Tasso's basic line is the unrhymed hendecasyllabic, but he frequently alternates this with passages in settenari, seven syllable lines. The nearest English metrical equivalent would be a blank verse varied with sections in trimeter. Yet even this open form would be too ponderous and bulky a vehicle for Tasso's mollezze. the soft swiftness of his smoothly lyrical lines. I have attempted to retain something of this free-flowing quality by foregoing metrical regularity.

On the other hand, the rhetorical devices within the Aminta seem to me much more substantial ordering forces than the meter. At times elegant and complex, at times simple and straightforward, these devices indicate the characters' emotions and separate them from the mundane world. The rustic tongues have been touched by Love, and their complex emotions find voice and grace through rhetoric. I have, therefore, retained, wherever possible, the rhetorical figures Tasso employed.

Just as rhetorical devices serve to indicate the emotional movement of the drama, so too diction and imagery are important vehicles for expression. In the Aminta there is a steady tension between the characters of the simple and rustic shepherds and nymphs and the complex, lofty emotions Love compels them to express. Thus the level of diction varies markedly, from high to low, often in the same passage, and the images and figures shift from epic similes to evocations of simple rural scenes. While at times the speeches seem to lack tonal unity because of these shifts, I have retained the devices and attempted to follow closely the movements between styles which mirror the dynamic fluctuation in the emotions of the characters.

The emotional quality is what finally makes the Aminta far more accessible to the modern reader than Tasso's major work, the Gerusalemme Liberata. In the Gerusalemme, Tasso explores the epic theme of the triumph of Christianity; in the Aminta, he explores the much more human theme of the triumph of Love. Though the work is twice removed from us, by language and by time, the vibrant quality of the poetry and the psychological depth of the characters overcome the barriers Time erects between Tasso's world and our own.

Notes

¹Bartolo Tommas Sozzi, Studi sul Tasso (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1954), pp. 11-12. Tasso, like Tirsi, had just turned 29.

²Sozzi, Studi, pp. 12-13.

³Sozzi, Studi, pp. 14-15. The problem between Tasso and Manuzio was a question of the dedication.

⁴Sozzi discusses the different edition in Studi, pp. 24-31. Other editions in the 1580's were by Baldini (Ferrara, 1581 and 1582), Viotti (Parma, 1581), Osanna (Mantova, 1581), and Angelier (Paris, 1584). Discrepancies between the various editions generally concern the presence (or absence) of the Mopso episode in Act I, the choruses to Acts II, III, and IV, and the Epilogue.

⁵Sozzi, Studi, pp. 16-24.

⁶See Gioia Barzano, "le prime due traduzione inglesi dell' Aminta," Studi Tassiani, 5 (1955), 192. Fraunce's translation is discussed more fully in Ernst Koeppel, "Die Englischen Uebersetzungen des 16en Jahrhunderts," Anglia, 11 (1889).

⁷Walter W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (1905, rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1959), p. 251. C. P. Brand discusses the influence of the Aminta on English literature in Torquato Tasso: A study of the Poet and of his contribution to English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), pp. 277-308.

⁸Brand, p. 40.

⁹Brand, p. 41.

Sozzi, Studi, p. 283. My translation.

¹¹Sozzi, Studi, pp. 284-285.

Prologue

Love, dressed as a shepherd

LOVE: Who would believe within this human form

and underneath all this pastoral garb

there would be found a god? Not just a woodland

deity or rank plebeian sprite,

but one amidst celestials omnipotent!

Who often makes Mars' bloody sword

drop from his hand, while Neptune's mighty trident

rattles to earth, and even from highest Jove

the eternal lightning slips! Surely so dressed,

in guise like this, my mother, Venus,

would not recognize her son, Love.

From her I'm forced to flee, to hide from her,

and just because she believes I should

administer my talents with what is

for her good sense. And that vain, ambitious

woman would force me to the court, where I

should launch my darts, exert authority,

on members of the crowned and sceptered set;

and only to my humbler ministers,

my lesser priests, does she grant leave to dwell

amid the woods and ply their weaponry

in uncouth breasts. So I, in truth no child,

although I bear a youth's face and attire,

wish to entertain myself as suits my pleasure,

for to me, not her, were given my gifts,

the bow of gold and omnipotent torch.

Frequently, therefore, I flee and hide

from her imperious "No!" (for my vexatious

mother will have no other power over

me than her prayers) and I take to the woods

and rustic cottages. Meanwhile she pursues,

rewarding those who'd point me out to her

with kisses sweet--or other things more dear.

And, in exchange, my gifts to those who hide

me, or at least keep mute, are valued less,

my kisses sweet--or other things more dear.

But at least I know for sure my kiss

is always far more sweet to maids, if I,

Love, deliver it with love.

And so she often seeks me all in vain,

for most will not reveal me, but keep still.

And to conceal myself more secretly,

so she won't find me by my counter-signs,

I have disguised my quiver, wings, and bow.

That does not mean that I come here disarmed,

for this, which seems a crook, is actually

my torch, that I've transformed, topped by coils

of flame, invisible; and this my dart--

even missing its gold point, it is

divinely tempered and bears the imprimatur

of Love wherever it flies. Today with this

I plan to make a deep, untreatable wound

in the stubborn heart of the cruelest nymph

who ever followed in Diana's choir.

Nor will the wound of Silvia be less

(for so is named that Alpine Nymph) than that

which I once made within the gentle

heart of Aminta, now so many years ago

when he youthfully followed her youth

in the hunts and games. And that my thrust

might penetrate her to a greater depth,

I will await until her yielding pity

melts, in her frozen heart, the cruel ice

that yet protects her austere honesty

and arrogant virginity; and towards that point

in which he was more soft, I'll launch my dart.

And that I may perform my work at ease

I go to mix among the crowd of gay,

garlanded shepherds, and already I've

an envoy there among them who stays solemn

on this day of play, feigning to be part

of that happy crew. And in this place,

exactly in this place, I'll strike the blow,

though this will not be seen by mortal eyes.

This wood today is subject to Love's rule

as they will know in a new way. The god

himself will be present here,

not just his ministers, for I will

inspire noble thoughts in these rude hearts,

sweeten the sounds upon their tongues, because

wherever I am, I am Love, no less

among these shepherds than with nobility.

And inequalities of subjects to my rule

I balance as I please. And just in this

my highest glory, greatest miracle lies--

to make the rustic sampogne sound as well-

played as the finest instrument; and if my mother,

who frets to see me wander in the woods,

does not know this, then she is blind, not I,

who wrongfully by blind fools am called blind.

Act I

Scene 1

Dafne and Silvia, two shepherdesses

DAFNE: Silvia, will you go on

wasting your youth

shunning the pleasures of Venus?

Never to hear the sweet name "Mother"

nor to see playing about you

handsome young sons? Oh change,

change please! Take my advice,

you foolish maid!

SILVIA: Others follow love's delights--

some each delight that wanders by.

This life suits me. My one sport,

to hunt with bow and arrow,

to follow the fleet beasts, the savage,

mortal combat, and if I don't lack

arrows for my quiver or beasts in the woods,

don't think that I lack pleasure.

DAFNE: Truly insipid pleasures

and an insipid life; and if you find it gives you pleasure

it's just that you've tried nothing better.

Thus the first man, who still looked

upon the world in simple innocence,

thought acorns and water sweet food and drink.

Now acorns and water

are food and drink for animals

as we use grapes and grain instead.

Thus if just once you tasted

the thousandth part of joy's flavor,

that savor from a loving and beloved heart,

sighing repentently you'd say:

"Lost is all that time

I didn't spend in love!

Fled is my youth:

how many widowed nights,

how many lonely days

have I consumed in vain

that could have been spent in the way

which sweetens the more I repeat it!"

Change, I warn you, change

you foolish child:

late repentance brings no joy!

SILVIA: When I say, "I repent," sighing

these words you make up and embellish

as you please, the streams will return

to their sources, and wolves will flee

the lambs and the greyhounds the timid hares,

the bear will love the sea and the dolphin the Alps.

DAFNE: I know what it is to be foolish and shy;

what you are now, so once was I; thus I led

my life and changed it. So blond was my hair

and so red were my lips

and my cheeks, full and yet delicate,

so blent with color of the rose.

It was my greatest glory (now I advise you,

a fool's glory) just to set the snare

and bait it with bread, sharpen the dart

to a point, spy out the tracks

and lairs of beasts; and if at times

a desirous lover looked at me,

I turned away my rustic, woodland eyes,

crowded with disdain and shame. To me

my graces were disgraceful

and what others found pleasing, a displeasure. Just so

being looked at, loved, and desired, I regarded as

my "sin" and my "shame" and my "disgrace."

But what can time not do? And what could not

a faithful and importunate lover do

through serving, deserving, supplicating?

I was vanquished, I confess to you, and the arms

of the conqueror were humility, suffering,

weeping, sighing, begging for mercy.

Then in the shadow of one short night I was shown

what I had not seen in the long race

or the light of a thousand days;

then I rediscovered my proper place

and in blind simplicity I sighed and said,

"Here, Cynthia, is your horn, here's your bow,

your arrows, your way of life that I renounce."

Thus I hope to see your Aminta

one day may tame your

rough wilderness and melt

that heart of iron and stone.

Is he not your idea of beauty? Or doesn't he love you?

Or does he not love others? Or does he change

through love of others or through your hate?

Perhaps for the sake of courtesy he gives you up?

If you are the daughter of Cidippe,

child of the god of this noble stream,

he is the son of Silvano, himself the son

of Pan, mighty god of shepherds.

The pristine Amaryllis is not less

beautiful than you--if you have ever looked

within some fountain's mirror; yet he disdains

her sweet attractions and follows your

mettlesome scorn. Now pretend (and you should wish

to God that this imagining might be vain)

that he is angry with you; at last you gain

something to please her he likes so much.

How do you like that? With what eyes

will others view your enterprise? Happy deed

for another's arms, and you laughed at scornfully?

SILVIA: Let Aminta do with himself and his loves

whatever would please him; I don't care a bit.

So he is not mine, let him be whose he wishes;

he could not be mine if I did not wish it,

nor, were he mine, would I be his.

DAFNE: Where is your hate born?

SILVIA: From his love.

DAFNE: Gentle father of a wicked son!

When could the lamb

be born of the tiger? The beautiful swan bear the raven?

You deceive me, or yourself.

SILVIA: I hate the love

of him who hates my honor, love him

when he wishes of me what I wish.

DAFNE: You wish yourself the worst; he desires for you

what you really should most desire.

SILVIA: Dafne! Either keep quiet, or if you speak,

speak of something else.

DAFNE: Now observe this diversion!

Hear this spiteful maid!

At least tell me this: if another loved you,

would you welcome his love this way?

SILVIA: In this way I would welcome each

who would set traps for my virginity,

those you call lovers and I enemies.

DAFNE: Then do you see an enemy

in the ram for the ewe?

Or the bull for the cow?

Do you see enmity

between dove and faithful dove?

Then call the seasons

enemies and treasonous;

the sweet Spring

that now sings joy

recounseling love

to the world and beasts

and men and women. Don't you see

all things

now caught in love,

a love full of joy, of health?

See how that dove

with a sweet murmur longs

to kiss his love?

You would hate that longing

hopping branch to branch

singing, "I love! I love!"? And, in case you didn't know,

the grass snake leaves its venomous pit and slithers

greedily to his love.

The tigers go in love,

the proud lion loves, and you alone, more beastly

than all beasts,

lodge denial in your heart.

Do I say lions and tigers and snakes

respond to love? Why even

trees love! Can you see with what passion,

what hugs and embraces,

the vines entwine their husbands?

Fir trees love firs, pines pines,

ashes for ashes, for willows, willows;

each beech burns and sighs for his mate!

The oak that seems

so coarse and crude

can feel and tell

the fires of love; and if you'd

any spirit and sense of love, you'd comprehend

their mute sighs. Now do you wish to be

less than the plants

by not being a lover?

Oh, I tell you, change, change,

you foolish child.

SILVIA: Well, when I hear

the sighs of the plants,

then I will be content to be a lover.

DAFNE: You take my faithful advice as a joke

and mock my reasoning--in love

you're no less deaf than foolish! But just go on,

a time will come that you will think

could not have followed. And of course I won't tell you

how you will flee the founts where now

you often look--and perhaps long--

that you'll flee the fountains

for fear of seeing yourself wrinkled and ugly,

though this is certainly true. But I won't tell you this,

for while it is a great ill,

it is yet a common one. Nor will I recount to you

the tale Elpino told the day before yesterday,

the sage Elpino to the beautiful Licori,

Licori, who overpowered Elpino with her eyes

with a power she should have felt in his song,

if duty in love were found here again;

a tale he told, while Batto and Tirsi,

Grand Masters of Love, listened. And he told

of the Cave of Aurora, where over the portal

is proclaimed: Hence, ah, go hence, ye profane.

He told of that and he told of what was told to him

by the Great One who sang of arms and love

and left to him the dying shepherd's pipe,

that down in the Inferno is a black cave

where fumes full of stench reek

from the gloomy furnaces of Acheronte

and that there ungrateful and thankless women

are eternally punished

in torments of darkness and tears.

There awaits that inn

prepared for your cruelty,

and it is truly proper that forever and ever

the fumes draw tears from your eyes

from whence pity

never could draw them.

Follow, follow your style,

obstinate child that you are.

SILVIA: But what did Licori do then? And what did she reply

to this thing?

DAFNE: You are so careless

of your own affairs, and you wish to know of others!

She responded with her eyes.

SILVIA: How only with her eyes?

DAFNE: She remarried this with a sweet smile,

and turned to Elpino: "My heart and I are yours,

desire no more; my heart could not

give more to you." And only this much would suffice

for a complete reward to the chaste lover;

if he had believed her eyes to be as true

as they were beautiful, he had given them complete faith.

SILVIA: And why did he not believe them?

DAFNE: Now do you not know

what Tirsi wrote? How he, frantic with desire,

rode through the forest

so that the charming nymphs and shepherds

were moved to both pity and laughter?

Nor does what he wrote deserve laughter,

even if what he did merited it.

He carved his lines in a thousand trees, and with the trees

the verses grew; and thus on one we read:

"Mirrors of the heart, false unfaithful lights,

In you I well recognize your deceits,

But what's the use? If I would avoid it, Love would prevent me."

SILVIA: While passing this time arguing,

I have forgotten that this is the prescribed day

I must go on the formal hunt

in the Eliceto. Now if you wish, wait

while first in the lonely fountain I remove

the sweat and dust from yesterday,

when, following the hunt, at last I caught

and killed a swift deer.

DAFNE: I'll wait for you

and perhaps I too will bathe in the fountain,

but first I wish to go home,

for it does not appear to be very late.

You should expect me to come to you,

and think in the meantime of just what is more important

than the chase and the fountain; and if you do not know,

you should realize that you do not know and put your trust in wisdom.

Scene 2

Aminta and Tirsi

AMINTA: I see that stones and waves

reply in pity to my tears.

To my tears I see

the waves sigh.

But I have never seen,

nor ever hope to see,

compassion in that cruel and beautiful girl

I never know whether to call Lady or Beast.

But she denies herself the name "Lady"

since she denies pity

to whom pity is not denied

by inanimate things.

TIRSI: Lambs feed on grass, wolves on lambs,

but cruel Love, he feeds on tears--

of tears he never seems to have his fill.

AMINTA: Oh, woe!

Love is now sated from my tears

and thirsts only for my blood, and soon

I trust he and this pitiless girl will drink

my blood with their eyes!

TIRSI: Oh, Aminta! Oh, Aminta!

What are you saying? Are you raving? Now rest assured

that another will be found if this cruel maid despises you.

AMINTA: Woe is me! How could I

find another if I cannot find myself?

If I've lost myself, what other gain

could ever make me happy?

TIRSI: Oh miserable one,

don't despair, for you will win her.

Maturity shows a man how to place

the bit on the lion and angry tiger.

AMINTA: But I cannot endure this long delay

until the death of misery.

TIRSI: It will be a short delay; in a brief space

angered, in a brief space pacified

is woman, a thing changeable in nature,

more than whistles in the wind and more than the tip

of a supple stalk of wheat. But, I pray you,

let me know more intimately of your

harsh condition and your love;

for, while you have confessed to me many times

that you love, yet you have been silent on where

the fixed place of your love is; and it is quite fitting

that, by my friendly fidelity and constant

study of the Muses, that which is hidden to others

should be unveiled to me.

AMINTA: I am content,

Tirsi, to tell you what

the woods, the mountains, and the rivers know, and men do not,

that I am now close to my death.

Thus let who will retell

the reason of my death and inscribe it

in the bark of a beech near the place

where my pale corpse will be laid in sepulchre.

And sometime in passing, that impious maid

might enjoy trampling with her haughty feet

on my unhappy bones. Among them she might say: "This is

just my triumph," and be pleased to see

her victory recorded for all

the simple peasants and pilgrims

drawn there by my death. And perhaps (Oh hope

too high to hope for!) one day she,

moved by a tardy pity,

might weep for the death of one whom, living, she has already killed,

saying, "Oh, that he were here and might be mine!"

Now just listen.

TIRSI: Go on and tell your story,

and perhaps I'll find a better end, one you've not considered.

AMINTA: I was a child; as one who strives

to gather the fruits from the bent branches

of the orchard by clasping with infant hands,

I came to know closely

the prettiest, dearest virgin

who ever spread her long, golden hair on the wind.

You know the daughter of Cidippe

and Montano, richest of herders?

Silvia, honor of the woods, every soul's ardor!

Of her I speak, Oh, alas! I lived, you see,

so close to her for some time that among

two turtle doves no more faithful mates

ever were or will be found.

Our dwellings were conjoined--

but more conjoined our hearts;

our ages close--

but our thoughts closer still.

With her I set the traps for the fish

and nets for the birds

and hunted the stags and quick deer;

and our pleasures and prey were shared.

But while I made prey of the beasts,

I was, I don't know how, preyed upon myself.

Little by little in my heart was born,

I don't know from what root,

as a plant that germinates by itself in the soil,

an unknown affection

which made me desire

to be always in the presence

of my beautiful Silvia;

and I drank from her light

a strange sweetness

that left in the end

and unknown bitterness.

I often sighed and did not know

the cause of the sighs.

This was the first love by which I understood

what kind of thing Love might be.

I discovered that at last, and so

now listen and take note.

TIRSI: I will attend.

AMINTA: In the shade of a beautiful beech, Silvia and Filli

were seated one day, and I together with them,

when an industrious bee

collecting honey from the lawn flowers

flew to Filli's cheek

and eagerly bit it and bit it again.

He was deceived by the similitude,

for he believed it a flower. Now Filli

began to cry, fretting

for the sharp pain of the sting,

but my beautiful Silvia said, "Hush, hush!

Don't cry, Filli, for

with enchanted words I will lift from you

the pain of the little wound.

The wise Arezia once taught

me this secret, and she had for reward

my horn of ivory wrought with gold."

So saying, she brought her lips

of her beautiful and sweetest mouth

to the sad cheek, and with soft

whispers murmured I don't know what verses.

Oh miraculous effect! Filli sensed at once

cessation of the pain; whether it was the virtue

of those magic words, or, as I believe,

the virtue of her lips

that heal with a touch!

Until this time I did not want other

than the sweet splendor of her beautiful eyes,

and dulcet words, much more sweet

than the murmur of a slow-running brook

that breaks its course among the tiny pebbles

or than the rustle of the wind through the leaves;

I now sensed a new desire in my heart

to bring my lips close to hers;

and in fact, I don't know how, more craftily and slyly

than usual (regard how much Love

sharpens the intellect!), helped

by a gentle deceit, I

was able to accomplish my desire.

Because, feigning that a bee had bit

my lower lip, I began

to lament in such a manner

that the remedy my words

did not request, my looks implored.

The simple Silvia,

pitying my pain,

offered to give aid

to the feigned wound, Oh woe! And made

more deadly and deep

my real wound

when her lips

touched my lips.

Bees in the flowers

could not gather so sweet a nectar

as the sweet honey I gathered

from those fresh roses.

Just as desire thrust

our ardent mouths to immerse themselves

and made our hands audacious,

so dread and shyness

refrained us from so doing.

But while this mixed sweetness

of secret worth

descended to my heart

it gave me such pleasure

that, feigning the pain

had not ceased,

she once again

repeated the charm.

From then onward desire and

impatient anguish grew,

until, knowing no more of my heart,

all my determination left me; and once

when nymphs and shepherds sat in a round

and played their game,

the one in which each whispers his secret

in his neighbor's ear,

"Silvia," I said to her, "I desire you and I will surely

die if you don't love me!" To which speech

she hid her beautiful face and a sudden,

unwonted blush rushed forth,

giving the sign of shame and anger;

I had no other reply than silence,

a troubled silence full of harsh

threats. After that she took herself away and wished

to see or hear me no more. And three times already

the barren mower has cut down the grain

and as often winter has shaken the green hair

from the trees and I have tried

everything to placate her except my death.

I pause, but in order to appease her I would die

and die willingly, if I had certainty

that she would feel pleasure or pity by it.

Nor do I know which of the two I would long for more.

Pity for my faith would be the best;

that would be greater recompense for my death.

But I do not wish to bring

trouble to the beautiful serene of light

of her dear eyes or to distress her beautiful heart.

TIRSI: Is it not possible, then, that one day

if she heard your words, she might love your?

AMINTA: I don't know and I don't think so; but she fled

my words as the asp an incantation.

TIRSI: Now have faith

that I have the strength to make her listen to you.

AMINTA: Your seeking would be in vain, or if you did gain permission

for me to speak to her, I would obtain nothing by speaking.

TIRSI: Why do you despair?

AMINTA: I have

just cause for my despair; the sage Mopso

forecast my cruel fate.

Mopso, who knows the language of the birds,

the virtues of the herbs and the fountain's words,

and recalls that which is already done,

observes the present and knows what's to come,

gave me a judgment infallibly true.

TIRSI: Of which Mopso do you speak? Of that Mopso

who has a language of honeyed words

and on his lips a fawning sneer

and fraud in his heart and a razor

kept under his cloak? Now chin up! Be of good cheer!

The false, unfaithful prognostications

he sold to dishearten you with his solemn

superciliousness shall have no more effect;

and to prove I know what I'm talking about,

rather than what he had predicted for you,

I rightly hope for a happy ending

to your love.

AMINTA: If you know for certain something

to comfort my hopes, don't keep it to yourself.

TIRSI: I'll tell you willingly. When first

I followed my fortune in this wood,

I knew that man, and my esteem for him

was like your regard. By and by, one day

I needed, and wanted, to go where

the Grand City sits on the banks of the river

and I asked him for his advice. And he

said to me: "You go into the wide world

where the sly and crafty city slickers

and wicked courtiers often

catch, cheat, and cruelly mock

us unwary peasants. Therefore, son,

go with this advice, and don't approach too near

to places they've hung with multi-colored and golden cloths

and wear new fangled plumes and uniforms and fashions.

But above all, watch that some evil fate

or youthful desire does not lead you to the Warehouse of

Idleness! Ah! Flee!

Flee those enchanted lodgings!"

"What place is that?" I asked. And he replied:

"Where dwell magicians whose enchantments

distort and deceive your vision.

Thus that seeming diamond and fine gold

is glass and copper; and those silver chests

that you would value as full of treasure

are baskets full of empty trash.

There the walls are artfully made

to speak and respond to speaking;

nor do they answer just brief words